Accessing Oracle Solaris Patches

You can obtain patches from the http://sunsolve.sun.com Website. To access patches from the SunSolve Patch Portal
Website, your system must be connected to the Internet and be capable of running
a web browser, such as the Mozilla web
browser.

You can access individual patches or a set of patches from a patch cluster,
or refer to patch reports.

Each patch is associated with a README file that has information about
the patch.

Patch Numbering

Patches are identified by unique patch IDs. A patch
ID is an alphanumeric string that is a patch base code and a number that represents
the patch revision number joined with a hyphen. For example, patch 118833-10
is the patch ID for the SunOS 5.10 kernel update patch, 10th revision.

Managing Oracle Solaris Patches

This section describes how to manage Oracle Solaris patches with the
patch tools that are available.

The patch tools do the following:

Determine the Oracle Solaris version number of the managing
host and the target host

While you apply patches, the patchadd command logs
information in the /var/sadm/patch/patch-id/log file.

Note –

Improvements have been made to the patchadd-M command. When you use this command to apply patches to your system,
you are no longer required to specify patch IDs in numeric order. If you use
the patchadd-M command without specifying
a patch ID, all patches in the directory are installed on the system. For
more information about these changes, see the patchadd(1M) man page.

The patchadd command cannot apply a patch or software
update under the following conditions:

The package is not fully installed on the system.

The patch package's architecture differs from the system's
architecture.

The patch package's version does not match the installed package's
version.

A patch with the same base code and a higher revision number
has already been applied.

A patch that obsoletes this patch has already been applied.

The patch is incompatible with a patch that has already been
applied to the system. Each patch that has been applied keeps this information
in its pkginfo file.

The patch being applied depends on another patch that has
not yet been applied.